Almost every industrial company engages in digital marketing now. But if all you have are a website and newsletter, you’re missing out on something important — visibility and a better opportunity to connect with customers and prospects.

In this era of digital media teeming with innovation, industrial professionals and the companies that market and sell industrial products and services are faced with an influx of digital channels. From the introduction of general search engines, to an increase in specialized search, to the rise of social media, industrial professionals have more digital tools and sources of information than ever to do their jobs better and more efficiently. They also gain exposure to more companies to buy from. The result is that your customers have more choices, more individualized preferences, and more power than ever before.

There are two primary reasons why industrial marketers are adopting a multichannel approach:

1. Customers have many digital tools at their disposal, and as a marketer you must engage them in ways that match their varied searching and sourcing preferences.

2. As an increasing number of companies allocate more of their marketing dollars to digital media, you must fend off increased competition online.

The evidence is mounting that multichannel marketing is producing the desired results for marketers in terms of improved campaign performance and a higher return on marketing investment. This phenomenon is known as the “cross-media multiplier effect.” It’s a classic case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.

Marketers are getting savvy
Marketers are demonstrating their savvy in regards to multichannel marketing. Many are abandoning single campaigns and instead adopting broader campaign strategies that integrate multiple digital channels and produce the cross-media multiplier effect.

But that doesn’t mean you can simply spread your budget across all the online channels available to you and expect to be successful. Marketers must allocate their budgets wisely. Certainly you need to invest in your company website. Beyond that, you must evaluate digital media to determine those channels that will help you most efficiently and effectively connect with customers and prospects.

The channels that are right for you are the channels that your customers use—and the channels your prospects use in new markets you want to penetrate. For engineers and other industrial professionals, the top channels they use to research a work-related purchase are general search engines, online catalogs, and supplier websites. But they also use many other digital channels to keep up with the latest technologies, product news, companies and brands. E-newsletters, social media, industry websites and directories, and online events are all important information sources for your customers, and all exert influence over their buying decisions.

Follow these two recommendations
1. With many channels to choose from, it’s not always easy to know which ones are best given your target audience. Reach out to experts such as your digital media partners for recommendations on multichannel, integrated solutions that can help you achieve your marketing goals.

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Have you formulated a multichannel digital media strategy to reach industrial professionals? What tips and ideas would you pass along to your peers in industrial marketing? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.